


Time

by icewhisper



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fae, Fae & Fairies, M/M, we see other people but not enough to tag them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-16
Updated: 2020-05-16
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:01:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24217078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icewhisper/pseuds/icewhisper
Summary: His mother used to say the fae were untouched by time, kept young through magic and the half-truths they told the humans they’d lured into their riddles. To trick was to live and to live was to thrive.(AKA the one where Len is not human and, even by fae standards, he’s not normal.)
Relationships: Mick Rory/Leonard Snart
Comments: 8
Kudos: 113





	Time

His mother used to say the fae were untouched by time, kept young through magic and the half-truths they told the humans they’d lured into their riddles. To trick was to live and to live was to thrive.

But him… _He_ was different.

She used to say he had time in his eyes, bright and terrifying and so unnatural that she’d had to glamour them human the moment he was born. Her boy, half-fae and half-man, who’d been due on the seventh day of the seventh month. Who had come early, because time was his and he knew when the moment was true.

Time was his and he was time.

His first memory was of a realization that his mother would die. She’d been older than the humans saw, a century in every line on her face. The lines would come quicker, he’d realized as he stared up with her with false eyes. She’d wither and die, he could see the time leeching from her skin like it was the countdown of a clock.

“You’re gonna die, mama,” he’d told her and hugged her tight when she swept him up.

He’d been three years old.

She died when he was eight, lost on the seventh day of the seventh month that was supposed to have been his birthday. He’d clutched her hand the way her husband never would and told her he could give her time.

“I can do it,” he swore. “Let me do it.”

But she shook her head with a strength she barely had. “A half-life is no better than a half-truth, my boy,” she whispered. “We do not lie.”

“I do,” he reminded her, because he could. His tongue could form untruths hers couldn’t, aided by the human blood of the father he trusted less than he trusted the fae. Aided by the blood of the man who she’d abandoned immortality for, because she’d let herself love a thing that could lie.

“Is it my time, Leo?” she asked him, holding his hand with a grip that was too weak.

“Yes.” There wasn’t much time clinging to her anymore, faded away by beatings and sickness. A little longer and she’d be gone.

“Then, it is.” She reached across with her other hand to lay it on his cheek. Her skin was too cool, but he didn’t flinch. “The humans lost to the Underhill are victims of time, left to waste and never rest. Do not wish that on me.”

He didn’t. He never could. She was too good to be left to that, but a child wants their mother.

She urged him close and let him hide his face in her chest so he couldn’t see the last of her time fade away.

Hours after her heart stopped, the doctors finally pulled him away from her body.

He screamed.

“She’s coming,” he told his father’s new wife one day while she cracked open a beer. “You shouldn’t drink that.”

When she took the pregnancy test three weeks later, he was the only one who wasn’t surprised. Then again, he was the only one that could hear the seconds and minutes of a new life gathering in her belly.

“I killed them, you know,” Mick told him as he flicked an empty lighter open and closed. He tried to make it look unbothered, like he didn't care, but Len saw the guilt. “My family. Burned them right up.”

“I know,” Len told him with the ease Mick couldn’t manage. His fingers twitched, anxious to stop the clicking of the lighter. It was beating off-time to Mick’s life clock. It was infuriating.

“This is usually the point where people run.”

The grin Len sent him was all teeth. “I’m not people,” he said, because he wasn’t. He was a half-breed, too fae for the humans and too human for the fae. A fae who could lie was a fae to be feared, especially when they could see the moment you’d take your last breath.

Mick would die around the fire he loved, too soon and _notrightnotrightnotright_.

Time wasn’t time around Mick. It made Len’s head hurt.

It also drew him in like a moth to a flame.

“…Why the fuck are you snickering?”

Mick loved the flame, which was just as well. The crack of a fire took up his whole heart, enough that Len never worried that Mick could make room for him. He wanted Mick, but he didn’t want love. He’d seen what happens when a fae loves a man and he’d promised his mother he’d never go down that path.

Mick wasn’t there for him to love, no matter how many times they took each other to bed. No matter how many times Mick lifted Lisa up onto his shoulders. No matter how many times Mick bandaged injuries and grumbled promises that he’d kill Lewis one day.

Love wasn’t for the fae, he reminded himself every time he wanted to linger on a kiss, on the brush of fingers against Mick’s shoulder. The fae are made of too many riddles and the humans of too many lies.

But one night Mick breathed _love you_ into Len’s sweaty shoulder and Len felt his breath catch. Things they shouldn’t have – shouldn’t _say_ and Mick knew better – but the words were in the air now, waiting for a response. Waiting for a punch. Waiting for a kiss. There was a yes or a no somewhere in there somewhere, but the want to speak riddles choked him up the way it rarely did anymore.

He tangled their fingers together and drew their hands towards his chest instead, holding Mick close, and hoped that was answer enough. 

Mick put a ring made of platinum – not iron, _never_ iron from Mick – around his finger on the seventh day of the seventh month in 2007.

Len wondered if he knew, thought he might from the gleam in Mick’s eye, but he didn’t ask. Asking meant answers he didn’t know if he was ready for, so he didn’t ask. He made his vows instead and wished for the first time that he couldn’t lie, because he was human enough to know he’d break a promise somewhere down the line.

Lisa grew older and older until she was ready to go out on her own. She kissed his cheek with a duffle bag over her shoulder and a suitcase by her feet, a smile on her lips. “We still have plenty of time,” she promised him, like she knew he was counting down seconds until she was gone. “I’ll be back for Thanksgiving. Eighty-three days, Lenny. One-thousand ninety-two hours.”

“One-thousand ninety-three,” he corrected lightly. “You forgot Day Lights Savings.”

“But does it count when we live the same hour twice?” she asked innocently, an old debate they’d had too many times, but it fit them like a well-worn glove. He huffed and tucked her head under his chin. She smiled. “You’re counting minutes, aren’t you?”

“To the second,” he confessed without shame.

She shook her head at him fondly. “Take care of him,” she directed to Mick as she went to give him a hug.

“Like anyone can take care of him,” Mick huffed, amused. “I just try to keep him alive.”

“I _can_ hear you.”

“We know,” they chorused.

Time. Mick was out of time. He was out of-

The fire didn’t matter. His time wasn’t up and injuries could heal, but _Mick_ -

Mick’s time, precious and necessary, was slipping away, fading from his skin as the ticking clock in Len’s head began to slow. Mick was running out of time and he didn’t even _notice_ . He’d let himself get comfortable – get _complacent_ – and he’d stopped letting himself think about Mick’s time and, now, the scant few minutes he still had were slapping him in the face.

He wasn’t used to panic, hadn’t truly felt anything that felt so akin to terror since his father had brought a broken beer bottle down on Lisa’s shoulder and he could count lost seconds in her blood.

“No,” he whispered as everything around him slowed to nothing. The flames stopped. Mick stopped. _Time_ stopped.

He thought of his mother, thought of her frail body in a hospital bed that never should have held someone like her. Thought of her quiet refusal for more time and thought that Mick would have said the same. Mick had always expected to die in fire and Len had always known he would, but faced with it – faced with the _end_?

Human eyes disappeared between one blink and the next.

“Seven years,” one of the Queen’s knights said. He wasn’t there, but the voice sounded severe in Len’s head.

“No,” he disagreed, because time was his and for as much as the fae loved to work in sevens, he didn’t. When it was appropriate. When the timing felt right. The timing for this wasn’t seven years. “When time stops existing.”

He traded himself away to a world he’d never wanted any part in.

Mick lived.

He should have left, he thought as he glanced across the way towards Mick. Weeks and months ago, he should have looked at Mick in his hospital bed, drugged and unaware, and walked away. It would have softened the blow, but the possessiveness he felt towards Mick was both a human and fae trait. Sometimes, he wondered if it was the only thing his bloodlines had in common.

The fae guards that had begun to follow him judged him for the human love he felt for Mick. Judged the attachment to a thing that could die, because even though he’d tried not to, he’d gone right down the same road his mother had.

He wondered if he’d still love Mick when his human side was burned away the way the fire should have burned out Mick’s last seconds.

But he’d stayed. He’d stayed and Mick healed and they lived.

He didn’t think Mick knew what he’d done.

The knife had been more iron than steel. The stab had been shallow, but iron mixed with blood and Len _screamed_. His blood would boil until there was nothing left, he thought hysterically as Mick pulled him up and away. A car. Movement.

He didn’t remember getting to the safe house or making it to the bed, but he was sprawled out on the bare mattress when Mick grabbed him by the face.

“Len,” he snapped. “Len, what do I do? What fixes iron poisoning?”

His tongue felt too heavy to talk. He didn’t… Mick… How…

“Len! Focus! Can they help you back there? Am I supposed to take you to the Court?”

“You know?” he managed, words slurred and half-lost in groans of pain.

Mick’s eyes were watery when he smiled. “I’m not blind, you asshole. My entire family could tell.” Parents and siblings with too little time left and death at their heels. “You gotta tell me what to do.”

“Wait,” he forced out. Everything was going fuzzy. “Human side’ll burn it out.”

“Human?” Confusion. Awe. Len understood. Not many like him existed. Most were slaughtered by horrified human mothers or ashamed fae ones.

“Won’t die,” he promised as his glamours fell away and inhuman eyes began to roll back in his head. “Not time yet. Queen won’t let me go.”

Mick’s hands moved away from his face. “Len, what the hell did you do?”

He didn’t answer.

The world went dark.

“What did you mean the Queen won’t let you go?” Mick asked later when his fever had finally broken and the pain had receded to a dull ache all over his body.

Len closed inhuman eyes he still didn’t have the strength to glamour human again and swallowed around a sore throat. Tried to remember how long he’d screamed. Twenty-seven hours, seventeen minutes, seven seconds. “Doesn’t matter,” he rasped. “There’s nowhere time doesn’t exist.” What he’d promised could never come to pass if the conditions were never met. Fae were bound by their promises and their contracts.

“You did something,” Mick insisted, deadly serious, and Len heard his breath stop as his partner realized, but didn’t have it in him to look at Mick with bright eyes to see the horror come over Mick’s face. “Shreveport...”

“You have time now,” Len murmured around a hoarse throat as he blinked blue eyes open to stare at the ceiling. As he listened to the calm ticking of Mick’s time – time that wouldn’t _be there_ if he hadn’t made a deal with the Queen.

Mick’s fingers brushed the vines printed into the skin of his arms until his hand made it to Len’s shoulder and he simply held on.

They didn’t speak again the rest of the night.

Rip explained the Vanishing Point to them and Len _knew_ . Judging by the wide-eyed look Mick sent him, so did he. It wouldn’t matter, then – not that Len had seen Rip’s hourglass filled with blood instead of sand and knew some part of him was _damaged_ and manipulated into something doomed to fail. Not that he’d seen phantom feathers falling off Carter and Kendra until Carter’s had slowed and stopped entirely only to reform into something _new_ . Not that he’d looked at Sara and nearly fell into an abyss, because her time was _gone_ and he didn’t know what she was now.

It didn’t matter that he’d heard the tick of Mick’s clock change in pitch until they’d landed at a field and Rip wanted him to take care of his partner. The laugh he’d given that night had been on the wrong side of unhinged as he ignored his cold gun and went for Rip’s throat with his hand instead, but it had ended with them both in a cell Rip had forgotten about and leaving that place _together_. Whole.

Mick’s tick had gone back to normal and Len had been foolish enough to think that they’d be okay, that his full-body _need_ to be surrounded by time hadn’t ruined them.

But they were somewhere time didn’t exist and he could _feel_ something inside calling to him.

Taking Mick’s place was never a question, even as Sara helped his partner to his feet and Mick stared at him like he wished Len had hit him hard enough to knock him out.

“Don’t go,” Mick said and it wasn’t a plea, because Mick didn’t beg, but Len could see the fear in his eyes. “Fuck whatever deal you made-”

“Go against the Queen and the whole hive gets angry,” he told Mick as Sara stared on in confusion and his words slipped away from him a little. He could feel something licking at the arm he had inside the wellspring, boiling bits of him away as his words got harder to say clearly. He was pretty sure Mick knew, if the way his eyes widened said anything.

“Fuck the hive, Len-”

Len snorted and didn’t try to make the comment that wanted to come out. His words would only get twisted enough that the joke would get lost. “Tick tock,” he told Mick instead. “Time’s up.”

Mick opened his mouth to argue, but Sara gave a sharp nod at the look he gave her and put her hand on Mick’s arm. “We need to go,” she said regretfully and looked at Len like this was hurting her. He wondered if it did. The others had respected him a little more when he’d refused to put Mick down like a dog, but they’d never forgotten the way he’d gone at Rip either.

“You’re not out of time,” Mick insisted as he stepped away from Sara’s touch. Len watched, for a moment, curious to see if Mick would rush up to give him a goodbye kiss like in those stupid movies Mick pretended he didn’t love. He didn’t. He took two steps closer and stopped, staring Len down like a part of Len wasn’t already burning away. “You hear me?”

“Half,” he corrected and even the single word was hard to say.

Mick understood, anyway. Had known since they sat together in a safe house after Mick had listened to Len scream for hours.

Human eyes bled away as the burning in his veins reached his eyes and he heard Sara gasp. “Tick tock,” he said again. This time, Mick nodded and stepped away, jaw clenched as he grabbed Sara by the arm and they both began to run.

“What happens when an hourglass spins?” he called at their backs before he let the burning take him.

“What are you?” a dark-skinned girl with someone else’s face asked him when he wandered onto the bridge. It didn’t matter how long it had been anymore. Millennia. Centuries. Decades. Months. Days. He could count it down to the millisecond if he wanted to, but why bother with time travellers? They warped time every time they moved, sent it into chaos like a child jumping into a puddle. Droplets flew and the water settled, but some pieces were forever out of place and would never make it back.

Stein had run out of time.

Jax ran with what he still had left.

Rip’s bloody hourglass had finally shattered, too damaged for that blood to ever turn back to sand – if it ever had been at all.

Sara and Ray’s eyes went wide, but theirs weren’t the familiar face he looked for. Weapons were pointed, but he paid them no heed. Mick had removed any iron weapons from the ship long ago and he doubted the man would let them back on. Still, he waved at them, fingers waggling, and twisted his head when he heard the old sound of Mick’s boots.

“What happens when an hourglass spins?” he asked again, because Mick had never answered his question so long ago.

“Time stops,” Mick said with an indulgent tone.

“Pauses,” he corrected. “Stops is death.”

“And only half of you died,” Mick finished.

“Mick,” Sara started, but Mick stepped away from the Asian girl with the beast inside of her and closer to Len.

“It’s him,” he told her before she could argue that it wasn’t. “Snart was never human.”

“Fae,” the shapeshifter realized. “He’s _fae_.”

Mick hummed as he finally got close enough to Len to take in the eyes that would never look human again. Looked down at the loose tunic and pants with the exposed skin with vines laid into it like tattoos. They curled up his arms and up his neck, curling to an end on his cheeks. Every end looked like the hand of a clock. Before, he’d kept himself covered – hid those vines away because his human half was too conscious of people knowing what he was. Now, it didn’t matter.

“You staying?” Mick asked, voice carefully steady, like he wouldn’t let himself hope. Like he was okay with the fact the Len he’d married was gone, human half burned away like the fire had wanted to do to Mick once. Like it didn’t matter that Len’s words twisted into things Mick would have to decipher to understand. Like he loved him even if there was nothing human left to him except for the love that hadn’t gone away.

Maybe it didn’t matter, he thought, because he’d never been able to say the words before plain speech was burned out of his brain.

He pointed at the middle of Mick’s chest where Len’s ring hung under his shirt with a slim finger, nail painted green. “Round and round we go,” Len answered with a grin as Mick pulled the chain out with a confused look so he could look at it closer.

A moment later, Mick barked out a laugh and Len smiled, because Mick _knew_ – had finally seen the vines engraved inside the ring that twisted into letters. The words that had only ever described the noise of Mick’s time, because Mick’s time was Len’s and, other than Lisa’s, it was the only one that mattered.

 _Tick tock_.

The End


End file.
